Ultimate Quake (Mod)
Ultimate Quake is a modification for Quake made by Michael Gummelt on September 29, 1996. It took him around three weeks to design this modification and was the first project done by Gummelt for Quake. When Duke Nukem 3D came out, Gummelt enjoyed it, and he felt that Quake had a more disappointing release. Primarily, in his opinion, this was due to a general lack of details. The look and feel was right, but the game was sorely lacking in regards to interesting resources or the ability to duck. Ultimate Quake therefore is a large-scale attempt to fix these issues, plus include new Weapon modes for almost every Weapon, and a full-fledged magic system. Gummelt started Ultimate Quake with the goal of making it a simple compilation modification. He soon discovered that many others were doing something similar, which in turn dissuaded him from doing such, especially as he felt most of these modifications didn't hold much in the way of practicality; they were more about the potential possibilities of what could be done with the code than about something worth playing. As Gummelt continued to learn, not being a programmer to begin with, he started reworking many of the modifications he included to the point they were unrecognizable from their original forms. It should be noted that Gummelt felt Ultimate Quake was incomplete, primarily due a severe limit in regards to space. Due to a limitation on the number of lines that could be included within the code, Gummelt ran out of room and thus was unable to expand like he would have liked. These limitations in turn resulted in him removing certain Monsters from the game in order to fit the features he wanted to include; specifically the Spawn, Rotfish, Chthon, and Shub-Niggurath. Note this means that a complete run of the campaign with this modification is therefore impossible. In addition to having to remove enemies, Gummelt also had to compress his code to a severe level. This means that it is difficult to include these features in any other compilation, since they are so intertwined and needed for other things to function. Weapon alternate modes used to be more complex, but were trimmed down in playtesting to the ones Gummelt used the most, finding that most were not that useful. All weapons have an alternate mode besides the Double-Barrelled Shotgun, which was considered balanced enough as it was. Note that this modification can be unstable, especially outside of Episode 1: Dimension of the Doomed. There are numerous levels that will entirely freeze upon loading, such as E4M2: The Tower of Despair. There are other levels, such as E2M6: the Dismal Oubliette, which are nearly unplayable since they border on too many edicts. Note that the player must change their Weapon in this modification by using the impulse key for a specific Weapon. As this was made for 1.01, Impulse 12 did not exist, while Impulse 10 was disabled as it caused a crash. Impulses * Impulse 20 - Throws a partial Backpack; a Backpack with half of the player's current Ammo. This can be useful in Cooperative to trade Ammo, plus can be a potential way to convince an enemy not to kill you in Deathmatch. Note that a feature mentioned in the documentation, that Ogres can pick up your Backpacks, is incorrect and never happens in-game. * Impulse 21 - Throws a full Backpack. Identical to a partial, except that it throws all of the Ammo and Weapons a player currently has. A glitch exists where attacking will result in the player getting back a Weapon with infinite Ammo until they get another Weapon. This means the Axe in whatever mode it was left to if thrown when on the Axe, the Shotgun in either mode if the player was on the Shotgun, and the Shotgun in Shotgun mode if the player was using any other Weapon. * Impulse 22 - Ducking. The player can now toggle between standing and crouching, the latter of which allows the player to hide behind objects better. Crouching players move slower and do not have audible footsteps. * Impulse 50 - Previous spell. * Impulse 51 - Next spell. * Impulse 52 - Cast spell. * Impulse 53 - Current spell. * Impulse 62 - Detonates PipeBomb / Homing Rockets. * Impulse 63 - Deactivates PipeBomb. * Impulse 120 - Kicking. Mostly similar to the original Kicking modification, but includes a unique sound. The double clicking bug was removed. There are also no messages displayed on the screen if the player successfully kicks something. Kicking also causes a slight amount of damage (around 10) to Monsters, doing less to charmed Monsters than normal ones. Heads can be freely kicked as desired without causing damage. * Impulse 150 - Feign Death. Almost identical to the original modification, though it does have a bug where it places two empty Backpacks on a location instead of one. General Gameplay Changes * A large number of varied footstep sounds are included. * Players can now freely jump on top of anything. This means a player can continually jump on the head of a Monster, corpse, player, or head. * The player has a lower jump height than normal. * Falling damage is now more realistic. The falling player will increase in velocity until they reach a terminal level. The falling player will take damage based on said acceleration level, plus their mass, meaning a heavier player will be in more danger from falling damage. At the maximum height, however, any player is likely to be instantly Gibbed. Players can avoid taking the full damage by ducking just before they hit the ground, which is considered to be similar to rolling with a fall. Water can also prevent falling damage, though it must be deep enough for this to work. * Almost anything can now travel through a Teleporter or Wind Tunnel. Rocket Launcher projectiles have a chance of moving too fast to travel through said means. * Monsters, outside of their normal living state, can now be pushed around. Radioactive Containers and charmed Monsters are also able to be pushed around in a similar manner. Corpses and heads can stack on top of each other and are solid. When hacked apart, corpses will release a Gibbed head; these heads often are static if not slow moving, pushing them will just cause them to continually rotate in one spot. Heads will also decompose if left alone for about a minute. Corpses will automatically decompose, releasing the head after about a minute. Heads have a different gibbing sound from the normal body. Heads and bodies will float in Water, drifting in a relatively choppy animation on the surface of the Water. Heads can allegedly trigger buttons if kicked into them, but since they are kicked upwards they are never able to hit a Shootable Button unless it was directly above the player's head. Corpses can trigger Buttons if pushed onto them. * Doors now will open when anything of substance is nearby it, meaning projectiles can open Doors now. * Lavaballs now bounce before eventually exploding. They can also set a player on fire that gets hit by one. * Fire is now existent and will continuously cause damage to whatever entity is on fire. Fire can fizzle under the Water, immediately going out, and fire based injuries will not occur if the entity is in Water. The length of time before the fire depends on the entity, a player will take about 180 damage per fire attack, while a Monster will take around 50. * Any entity, outside of a player using Water based spells, under the Water will now continually generate bubbles behind them. Bubbles also are smart enough to not travel through solid entities. * Crucified Zombies can now be killed and shot at. * Shotguns and Double-Barrelled Shotguns now produce ejected shells as seen in Bort's QuakeC Mod. * Shotgun and Double-Barrelled Shotguns can now make sounds upon hitting a solid surface similar to those heard by a misfired Nail based Weapon. * Splash Damage has a very narrow radius. If the player fires a Grenade Launcher at a cluster of Zombies, it is likely that only the Zombie the player aimed at would be Gibbed. * Firing the Thunderbolt into Water, when the player is not in the Water, will cause opponents to be damaged based on how close they are to the beam. * The Ring of Shadows now lasts 90 seconds instead of 30. Monster Changes * While there is an alleged feature in the documentation where Monsters will float to the surface of the Water, this feature does not appear to work in-game. * The player can now suffer from wounds if hit with a melee attack by most opponents. The Ogre's chainsaw, the swords of the Knight and Death Knight, the Fiend, the Shambler, or another player's Axe can cause wounds that cause the player to continually bleed; meaning they continue to take damage long after the combat ended. If not treated, the wounds will eventually kill a player. Each wound will cause 1 damage per millisecond and they can be stacked. The player can heal all wounds with either a healing based spell or a 15 Health, 25 Health, or 100 Health. Note that these wounds bypass any form of invulnerability the player might have, including a Pentagram of Protection or even God mode. Note also that charmed monsters will turn on the player just before they die if bleeding to death, sort of like it is coming to its senses. The Shambler can cause melee wounds regardless of its attack, meaning it is very easy to get wounded just by being struck by the lightning attack of the Shambler. * Ogres, Grunts, and Enforcers now can hold a random amount of Ammo in their Backpack. Generally this is around 10-20, in the case of Enforcers it goes up to 30-40. Each attack that a Monster does will consume one unit of said Ammo, meaning it is ideal to kill them as fast as possible. It is possible to get empty Backpacks if the opponent consumes all available Ammo units. Note that these Backpacks can get past the normal Ammo values in the case of Rockets, allowing the player up to 200 at a time. * If a Grunt or Enforcer runs out of Ammo, it will continue firing as normal. In the case of the Ogre however, it will be forced to use its chainsaw until it finds more Ammo. Note that a Ogre will never get more Ammo, the mechanic to have it get more seems to not work properly. * A Fiend or Ogre can hack up a corpse if it gets in their way. * The Ogre is now far more accurate, being able to hit the player in most situations. It can adjust its height as needed, meaning it will fire a grenade much higher if the player is above them, while throw it in a relatively straight arc if the player is on-level or lower. For example, the Ogre at the start of E1M2: Castle of the Damned can now easily reach the player from their starting location, as opposed to vanilla where they would endlessly spam grenades that could never reach. Weapon Modes * Axe - Throwing Mode. An altered version of the Throwing Axe. This Axe has a large glow around it when fired, plus is on fire, meaning in turn that it can set opponents on fire while knocking them back a decent distance. The player only has one Axe, meaning throwing it results in being unable to use the regular Axe. This Axe behaves much like a boomerang, returning to the player after being thrown. This can happen after it hits a certain range, there is a maximum distance. In the event it cannot reach the player, it will fall to the ground like normal. The player can take another player's Axe in such a circumstance, resulting in said original player losing their Axe, while the player that took said Axe is rewarded with an additional Axe. If the player is near the thrown Axe, it will briefly change light levels and display a message stating that "Mjolnir Beckons...". If the player cannot reach their Axe after 33 of these messages, it will magically return to the player with the message "Mjolnir has magically returned". * Shotgun - Sniper Mode. Behaving much like a sniper rifle, the player can hit an opponent with a lot of accuracy and cause 80 damage per shot. Costs 4 Shells per shot, there is also a noticeable delay before the player can attack again. * Nailgun - Just combined with the Super Nailgun under "impulse 5". Otherwise behaves like normal, each still being their own individual Weapons. * Grenade Launcher - Flamethrower mode, is treated as the Weapon under "impulse 4" even though it is another mode of the Grenade Launcher (to the point it uses the Grenade Launcher obituary). Costs 1 Shell per shot and will temporarily stick to any surface. The Flamethrower will directly shoot a bit of fire, having a max range that is relatively moderate, allowing for some far shots to set opponents on fire. The Flamethrower mode in turn has an alternate mode, the Fireballs mode. This fires a Lavaball at the opponents, sticking to them if it hits while also setting them on fire, otherwise behaving identical to a naturally occuring Lavaball. Lavaballs fired in this manner will also bleed when they hit a surface, regardless of what that surface is. This mode costs 2 Cells. A tertiary mode exists alongside the Grenade Launcher proper, "impulse 6", a PipeBomb mode. This behaves much like the Weapon found in Skarmod, but instead of bouncing off opponents it will stick to them, allowing the player the ability to directly fire at the thing they wish to kill. A tagged player will fly upwards, meaning even being spared will result in falling damage. Impulse 62 is used to detonate the PipeBomb, while Impulse 63 will deactivate the projectile, allowing the player to reclaim it by walking next to it. These Rockets are automatically reclaimed if tagged to an opponent, not requiring the player to get near their adversary. Note that detonation will explode all PipeBombs, but disabling will only disable the most recently fired, meaning multiple will have to be disabled if the player wishes to reclaim all of them and has fired multiple. Note also that PipeBombs can be detonated prematurely while in the air if the opponent successfully hits it. * Rocket Launcher - Rapid Fire Mode. Allows up to 10 Rockets to be fired rapidly at a speed similar to that of a Super Nailgun. These Rockets will have a random spread, meaning they can choose to fire in any direction, and will randomly decide to home onto opponents (meaning it will continually follow an opponent until it collides with it). Opponents are warned of a homing missile tracking them with a sound and message. These Rockets cause 40-60 damage, much weaker than a normal Rocket Launcher shot. A secondary Spread Fire mode is similar to the Rapid Fire Mode in the Rockets it shoots, except that it fires five at once. This costs 5 Rockets that lack the homing properties of Rapid Fire Mode. Homing Fire Mode, a tertiary mode, fires a single homing Rocket that is as powerful as a regular Rocket Launcher shot. This projectile is smart enough to change opponents if they are killed prior to being reached, plus will also stick to a wall if no targets are found. Once on a wall, the Rocket will wait for an opponent to appear, whereupon it will automatically remove itself from the wall and go after them. This means there isa almost no consequence once fired, plus it can be detonated from the wall by using "impulse 62", which will detonate all Homing rockets along with PipeBombs. It costs 10 Rockets per use however and a slightly longer delay than a normal Rocket Launcher. * Thunderbolt - Laser Rifle. Almost identical to the Weapon found in Skarmod, but with an added obituary and sounds. Magic System One of the most notable and largest portions of the Ultimate Quake modification is the spell system. Spells are cast if the player has the correct amount of mana and experience. Based off of roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons, there are nine levels of spells, of which there are five per each spell level. Note that spell level is inconsequential in Quake, the spells are generally ordered by cost with the exception of conjuration based spells, which are generally more expensive than those it is around. Most of the time, a spell will cost 4 more mana than the spell before it. Each spell will spend mana, which in turn will automatically regenerate at a rate of 1 mana per second. Experience points define the maximum amount of mana that a player can have. A player starts the game with 0 mana. Experience points are in turn gained by killing Monsters; more powerful Monsters in turn give more experience. Note also that the player must kill the opponent directly, indirect means such as Infighting will not reward experience. The player is rewarded more experience for killing the opponent in less shots, an opponent that is Gibbed in a single shot will reward the highest amount of experience that can be given for said opponent. Note also that experience is based on the Difficulty level; Easy does not provide experience points, meaning in turn that Magic can only be used on Normal or higher Difficulty settings. As the player needs 24 mana to cast the weakest spell, this means they will need kill half of the opponents in E1M1: the Slipgate Complex on Nightmare (if every opponent is Gibbed) to start using magic. The player will also receive experience points with every Secret they find. Players in Deathmatch start with 900000 experience and the maximum amount of mana allowed, 900, also known as "full mana". The player can get similar results with an "impulse 9" cheat in Single Player. Impulses 50 and 51 toggle between the spells. Impulse 52 is used to cast the spell if the player meets the requirements, note that it is very easy to cast the spell multiple times, often wasting more mana than intended. Impulse 53 can be used at any time to display the currently selected spell. Each spell will display the name of the spell, the amount of mana and experience needed, and the amount of mana and experience the player currently has. Healing Spells * Heal Light Wounds - 24 Mana - Does not heal at all, making its sole use to remove wounds. * Heal Serious Wounds - 64 Mana - Heals around 40-60 points of health. Spells that permanently heal the user a certain amount. Also remove wounds. Essentially, are 15 Health or 25 Health, except that they vary more in the exact amount they heal. Note that the documentation included with the modification is completely incorrect in regards to what each spell does. Protection Spells * Ironskin - 28 Mana - Provides the caster with 90 units of Armor. If the player does not have any Armor prior to casting the spell, this will behave with a similar absorption level to a Green Armor, otherwise it will supplement the armor that a player has. Provides a maximum of 200 Armor units. * Protection Against Explosions - 52 Mana - Makes the player totally immune to any explosive based attack, such as Grenade Launchers, Ogres, or Radioactive Containers. Will last a total of 1 minute and does not announce when it is no longer active. Spells that offer the user some level of protection from some or all opponents for a temporary amount of time. Environmental Spells * Resist Fire - 32 Mana - Makes the caster not take damage to fire and Lava. Note this is not just invulnerability, the player will not be dealt any damage at all in regards to such Hazards. Lasts 90 seconds. * Levitation - 68 Mana - Puts the player in fly mode for 30 seconds. Also makes it so the player does not get falling damage. Spells designed to survive some Hazard or the general environment of the world. Stone Spells * Flesh to Stone (Animal) - 40 Mana - Turns any Animal class Monster to stone. * Flesh to Stone (Person) - 60 Mana - Turns any Person class Monster, or another player, to stone. Spells that turn the opponent in question to stone. Stone opponents cannot move or attack, plus will immediately drop to ground level. They are also far more fragile than the normal opponent, usually requiring a couple weak Shotgun shots to Gib. Note that "ULTQMIN" only supports the Rottweiler turning to stone, all other opponents require the full version of Ultimate Quake, which was made separate due to the large number of PROGS files resulting in a much larger download size. An opponent turned to stone will remain such for a limited amount of time, whereupon they will continue to breathe and be stuck in their idle animation. The exact amount of time varies per opponent type. A player turned to stone will be unable to swap or cast spells, attack, or do anything but look around. Note that an opponent will continue to look frozen in stone for as long as they are idle, even after they are no longer under the affects of the spell. Note that an opponent that is killed while in stone will generate a head that does not have a proper texture made for it. In source ports like GLQuake, this will result in an untextured head. Opponents can have a resistance to being turned to stone. Generally, the lower the amount of health the Monster has remaining, the more likely they can be frozen. This means a Shambler with full health is very unlikely to be turned to stone, a player must tear down most of its health before such a spell would work. Note that there are three classes of Monster in Quake. Animals include the Rottweiler and Fiend. The Spawn and Rotfish are also considered Animals, though neither is included in-game even though PROGS files for them exist. The Person class includes the player, the Grunt, the Enforcer, the Knight, and the Death Knight. FISHSTONE.PNG|Rotfish DOGSTONE.PNG|Rottweiler GRUNTSTONE.PNG|Grunt ZOMBIESTONE.PNG|Zombie KNIGHTSTONE.PNG|Knight ENFORCERSTONE.PNG|Enforcer SCRAGSTONE.PNG|Scrag SPAWNSTONE.PNG|Spawn OGRESTONE.PNG|Ogre DKNIGHTSTONE.PNG|Death Knight FIENDSTONE.PNG|Fiend VORESTONE.PNG|Vore SHAMBLERSTONE.PNG|Shambler PLAYERSTONE.PNG|Ranger Charm Spells * Charm Animal - 56 Mana - Charms an animal. Uses the same class system for Monsters as seen under Stone Spells. Will turn a Monster to the player's will. Does not have any effect on players. Charmed creatures will follow the player around and attack any opponents that attacks the player, meaning they will not preemptively attack a Monster until such an attack is made. Charms are permanent until the Monster dies. The player will be alerted when a charmed Monster is killed. Note that charmed creatures will not provide any experience if killed by the player. Conjuration Spells * Summon Scrags - 80 Mana - Summons a Scrag. Spells that summon a particular Monster that behave similar to what they would under the charm spell. Note that these spells tend to be the most expensive, meaning they cost a lot more mana than spells around it. There is no limit to the number of charmed Monsters that can be summoned under the player's control, meaning a patient player can amass an entire army. Unlike charmed creatures, however, a conjured creature cannot be pushed around. Multiplayer Spells * Dispel Magic - 44 Mana - Removes spell effects from the player. Spells that only work with other players involved, making them useless in a Single Player context. Miscellaneous Spells * Illumination - 36 Mana - Fires a light source where the player is looking, somewhat like Quake Flares in regards to sound and dimming. Unlike the aforementioned mod, there is no visible projectile fired or sound upon colliding with a surface, it simply instantly hits a surface. Can be connected to a Monster or player, sticking to them and temporarily lighting them up. There is a brief particle effect that shows when on an opponent that is not seen when on a general surface. Spells that don't really share properties with other spells, having no real upgrade path or spells similar to it. New Obituaries * "Player" was fragged by a Scrag - Scrag * "Player" was destroyed by magic - Killed by a spell * "Player" was sniped by "Attacker"! - Sniper Mode. * "Player" got zapped by "Attacker" - Laser Rifle. Sounds Gallery DUCK.png|A ducking player. KnightFire.png|A Knight is on fire. __NOEDITSECTION__ Category:Quake 1996 open-source mods Category:Quake overhauls